In 1862 Phillips County, Arkansas
was occupied by Federal troops. Dobbins sent his family to Tennessee
and joined a Confederate regiment commanded by Thomas C. Hindman.
When Hindman was appointed to take over the military command of
Arkansas, he brought Dobbins with him to Little Rock as a colonel on
his general staff. Following his service on Hindman’s staff,
Dobbins was given command of a brigade of cavalry that became known
as “Dobbins Cavalry” or more formally the 1st Arkansas Cavalry.
Dobbins returned with his cavalry to Phillips County which became
his base of operations.

Dobbins Cavalry is difficult to research because not only was
it a loosely-organized regiment, but most of the typical paperwork
generated by a regiment in the field is missing from the record.
Only a handful of muster rolls, and almost no quartermaster or
commissary reports, are known to exist.Dobbins brigade was assigned to a division commanded by
Gen. Lucius M. Walker and fought in major engagements, raids, and
skirmishes throughout eastern and northeastern Arkansas.

After Walker was killed in a
duel with fellow general John S. Marmaduke, Dobbins assumed command
of Walker’s division. When Marmaduke became Dobbins superior,
Dobbins refused to serve under him in protest of the killing of
Walker. Marmaduke ordered Dobbins arrest and court martial. On
November 23, 1863 it was announced that Dobbins had been dismissed
from the army. Despite the verdict, Dobbins never officially
surrendered his command and continued to operate his brigade out of
the Helena area. 1864 dispatches from Confederate Gen. Joe Shelby to
his commanders in northeast Arkansas included Col. Dobbins.

As the war was nearing the end,
Dobbins was promoted to general on the field, but this promotion was
never entered in the official records, due in part to the turmoil of
the confederate army and government in its last days. Dobbin’s
Cavalry surrendered and was paroled at Wittsburg, Arkansas on May
25, 1865. Dobbins himself fled to Texas where he planned to cross
into Mexico and send his slaves to Cuba. Dobbins did not reach his
slaves or Mexico and signed his parole at Galveston on July 13,
1865.

In 1867 Dobbins left the United
States and started a plantation 30 miles from Santarém, Brazil. In
one of his letters Dobbins mentioned that he was only about six
miles from an American colony in Brazil. This may have been the Lost
Colony of the Confederacy. In 1869 Dobbins wrote for his wife to
join him in Brazil but as she made plans to travel to South America,
the letters stopped coming. Dobbins was never heard from again.
Years later it was reported that the general had been killed in an
Indian uprising which swept the area of his plantation in about
1869.

A Confederate style VA headstone
stands as a cenotaph to Archibald Dobbins in Confederate Cemetery in
Helena, Arkansas.